Mass Effect 30 Day Challenge: Day 19

Prompt 19: Your perfect ending to the series

SPOILERS: Mass Effect 3, Extended Cut DLC

WARNING: LOTS of Shakarian feels, Extreme Headcanon

Title: Orders

1 Week after activation of the Crucible and the destruction of the Reapers, 2186 CE

The Normandy had trouble landing in what was left of the streets of London; between the massive corpses of the destroyed Reapers and the fallen pieces of the Crucible it was almost impossible to find a clear spot. Cortez had wanted to take them down in the shuttle but Joker had refused, as had the rest of the crew and the team.

Everyone wanted to be there, just so they could see it with their own eyes.

The clearest spot was across the river from the makeshift medical facility, and the team had to do some creative maneuvering to make their way over the rubble of the nearest bridge. Joker had some trouble in the worst spots, as did Liara thanks to all of her injuries from the fight still not being fully healed, but the little group made their way to the other side as best they could.

"Radio ahead," Ashley said to Garrus. "Let them know we're coming."

"Already done," Garrus said. He had said almost nothing in the last week. Nobody, not even Tali, had heard a word out of him since they had received the transmission from what remained of Alliance headquarters. His silence was unnerving, though the rest of the team understood. All of them had been subdued, had barely slept, since they had gotten the news.

Now all they had was the hope that the transmission had carried the truth.

London was still a war zone, even if the war was over. Looking around the crew of the Normandy saw bodies sprawled across the streets and pieces of ancient Reaper wreckage on top of crushed buildings. The stench of burning bodies hung in the air, but that was almost a welcome thing. Burning bodies meant that people were starting to rebuild, to clear away the destruction, to make room for the future.

"Up ahead," James said, pointing at the tall building on the other side of an ash-covered square. Bright red phone boxes lay on their sides, all the glass fallen from their windows, and a row of soldiers lay at the feet of a statue, but just beyond them an old building that appeared mostly intact stood with a large red cross painted crudely on each side. None of them needed to ask if that was the place.

Two soldiers – a Human and a Turian – stood on either side of a pair of heavy doors, both of them holding military issue rifles. They saluted as the little group approached, and as they passed through the doors, Garrus heard the Human whisper to his companion. "Was that-?"

"Yep," the Turian replied. "It's her team."

Nobody had to ask to whom the soldier was referring. Garrus began to walk down the long hallway faster, Tali and James keeping pace with him while Doctor Chakwas and Liara fell in slightly behind with Joker and the rest of the crew, most of them unable to keep up. Another soldier, this one Asari, stood in front of a door with a pistol, which she let fall to her side as the Turian approached. She almost looked terrified.

Garrus didn't slow down until he was mere inches from her. He glared down at the woman, who swallowed anxiously. She clearly knew who he was just as well as the men at the door did. He let out a soft growl and said three words, voice hard as steel, that echoed along the dingy corridor:

"Where is she?"

The Asari soldier wordlessly pointed to her right and Garrus took off down the hallway, this time not waiting for anyone else to keep pace with him. He thought he heard Tali talking with the woman behind him, asking questions, what condition was she in, was it safe to move her, how many other survivors were in the hospital, but he didn't care.

Right now, nothing else mattered.

The corridor led to a pair of swinging doors, which in turn led to a flight of stairs. They passed more soldiers, some of whom saluted and others merely pressed their backs to the walls and pointed, giving Garrus a clear path. The second floor looked more like a hospital rather than a repurposed department store, which is what the building had been before the attack. He saw doctors in surgical scrubs passing each other in the hallway, nurses running with datapads, patients sitting on makeshift benches or sleeping in hallways.

Garrus rounded one final corner before the final person to point for him, a human doctor with a solemn expression on his face, directed him to a room. "Please," the doctor began.

"No." Garrus growled, and he pushed open the door.

The room had white walls and a window. Daylight, what little of it that could filter through the ashes outside, came in and fell across the end of the single bed. The sounds of beeping monitors created a soft background chorus for the scene, little lines dancing back and forth across screens. At least four different IV's ran criss-crossing across the bed and into the arms of the barely recognizable figure lying against the pillows. Burnt, bruised, arms and legs in casts and in splints, a mask over her face pumping oxygen into her lungs, hair half-burned away and eyes closed.

But it was her.

And she was alive.

Garrus stopped next to the bed and stared, unable to speak.

Shepard.

The rest of the team had caught up with him and all of them, especially Chakwas, were giving the doctors the third degree. Garrus barely registered the information as the voices echoed from the hallway.

"… her condition?..."

"… stable… lost a lot of blood… multiple fractures… hemorrhaging… collapsed lung…"

"… treatment?"

"… induced coma."

Garrus felt a hand on his shoulder and he glanced over to see Tali standing beside him. He let her guide him over to a chair, which he pulled up next to the bed. Gently, so as not to touch any of the tubes or machinery, Garrus reached out and took the bruised hand that lay on the sheets.

"It was true," Tali said, her voice barely above a whisper. "She survived."

Garrus couldn't think, couldn't speak. All he could do was stare and feel the hand, cold, in his own, and watch her chest barely rise and fall in almost imperceptible breaths.

Garrus saw the rest of the team, as many as the nurses would let past anyway, filter slowly in and line up around the bed. Ashley, sitting directly across from him in front of the window. Joker, sitting on a crate, James and Cortez just beside him. Liara standing at the foot of the bed, one hand resting on the metal frame. Javik leaning against the doorjamb. He still heard Chakwas outside talking with the other doctors, but the words were lost to him then. All he could see was her face.

"They said it was her armor," Liara said, breaking the silence. "The team downstairs. When I asked them how they found her, they said it was something her armor did."

"Her armor?" James asked, leaning forward. "What happened?"

"They received a signal," Liara said. "Said they thought it was a static burst at first, but one of the soldiers on the team, a Quarian engineer, he recognized it. Said it was a binary distress call, a series of ones and zeroes."

"An artificial SOS?" Tali asked.

"Yes," Liara nodded. "They tracked it to the worst of the debris where the Crucible fell and that's where they found her. Barely alive. If they hadn't gotten that message…"

"EDI," Joker said, his voice very quiet. "It was EDI."

"How can you be sure?" Javik asked from the door. "We saw EDI on the ship, the AI fell to pieces after all the Reapers were destroyed, after the Geth ships spiraled out of control."

The rest of the team fell silent. Garrus felt himself talking even though he barely recognized his own voice. "Three years ago," he said. "Luna base. The rogue AI we took out. EDI, before she was EDI. She contacted us, using a binary series, a code."

"Same thing," Joker said, and this time his voice was choked with emotion. "She…" he swallowed. "She made sure someone got Shepard out of there alive. Even if she didn't."

Silence rolled across the group again, and Doctor Chakwas came in and stood next to Liara. "The doctors have no way to tell when she'll wake up," she said. "Or if she ever will. Her life signs are stable and they're giving her the best care they can. All we can do now is wait, wait and help."

The rest of the team slowly filtered out of the room, somber but hopeful, each of them asking the doctor in turn to let them know the second the Commander woke up.

Except Garrus, who stayed seated and kept his hand firmly wrapped around hers.

Tali was the last to leave the room, taking the doctor with her. "I'll keep an eye on him," she said to Chakwas. "He won't be going anywhere."

"Understandable," he heard Chakwas say as the door closed. "Perfectly understandable."

Garrus continued to sit beside her, holding her hand, until the hours melted together. He lost track of time, only leaving the chair next to the bed when dragged by Tali or Liara or when the doctors kicked him out. Even then he remained by the door, sleeping minimally and eating next to nothing of the dextro rations Tali brought for him. He could barely sit still, only felt remotely calm when sitting beside her.

"You don't understand," Garrus growled at one point when Javik and James had to forcibly drag him from the room. "I left her once, I'm never leaving her again."

Time seemed to pass in strange bursts. Sometimes minutes felt like hours, but other times days felt like they were gone in an instant. The rest of the team came in and out over the days, over the weeks, sometimes sitting with Garrus to keep him company, other times taking the chair on the other side of the bed and holding silent vigil with him. Other people, other survivors of the war, came through too – once the Normandy had landed, the news of Commander Kara Shepard's comatose state had spread like wildfire. Garrus saw Wrex, Admiral Hackett, Jack, even Aria T'Loak come through to visit the Commander as the days swam by. Some stayed to try and talk with him, others stayed and spoke with Shepard, wishing her well or whispering quiet thank-yous.

One afternoon a tall woman with greying blonde hair came into the room and sat across the bed from him, and even though the two of them didn't speak, Garrus could see the family resemblance, and he and Hannah Shepard sat and watched over Kara until the sun came up the next day.

She left reluctantly, speaking only as she stopped at the door. "Garrus Vakarian."

Garrus turned his head to her and nodded. He knew he must have looked a disaster, having barely eaten or slept since their arrival, however many days ago it had been. "Yes ma'am."

"Thank you for watching over my daughter," she said. "Call me when she wakes up."

Garrus nodded. "Yes ma'am."

He felt himself almost wanting to laugh. As far as first impressions and meeting the parents went, that had gone much better than he'd anticipated. He only hoped that Kara's meeting of his family would go so well.

He only hoped that she would be awake for it.

Garrus didn't know what everyone else did when they weren't in the room. Presumably they were helping out with the patients in the hospital if they could, going out to hunt for other injured survivors. They came to check in on him, and Shepard of course, but he knew that often they were dropping by just to make sure that he was eating and getting at least some sleep in the chair that had become his home, the room that had become his entire world, where Kara Shepard lay in stasis, and he waited patiently for her to wake up.

It happened the day the sun came out. Garrus had lost all concept of the traditional passage of time by this point, unsure if he had remained at her side for weeks or merely days. He remembered the sun though, the first rays gleaming through the windowpane since the war had ended. The ashes outside were slowly starting to clear, most likely due to a rainstorm the night before. Warm light crept across the room and warmed his hands where they sat, gently resting on Kara's arm. The swelling and bruises around her face had been severely reduced, she was breathing without a tube again, and Garrus had overheard one of the doctors mention something about how fast her bones seemed to be healing. Must have been the Cerberus technology, he'd thought to himself. Evil bastards they were, but they had made damned sure their investment was going to survive.

No matter what.

Garrus heard her before he noticed any movement. A soft sigh, a noise of pure exhaustion, came from her lips, and he sat up, almost falling out of his chair.

"Kara," he said, his voice hoarse from lack of use. "Spirits, Kara?"

He gently clasped one of her hands, resisting the urge to squeeze it with all his might. His eyes never left her face, where her lips slowly parted and her eyelids fluttered open. She coughed, a sick, choking noise, and she wheezed a little as she breathed in. Garrus felt her fingers slowly squeeze his.

"G…" her voice was thin and scratchy, and she coughed again. "Garrus?"

"I'm here," he said, leaning over her and gently touching her face with his other hand. "Kara, I'm here."

"Did we…" she coughed again, and this time her eyes opened fully, the same shade of pale blue they had always been. Garrus felt as if he were going to collapse with relief and tears of joy. "Is it… over?"

Garrus leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. He closed his eyes. "Yes," he said. "The Reapers are dead. Destroyed. Gone. It's over."

He watched as she tried to smile, then winced at the pain in her jaw. She looked up at him and coughed again.

Garrus shook his head. She was indestructible. Back from certain death twice, destroyer of the Reapers, hero to an entire Galaxy.

Commander Kara Shepard.

"I didn't think you'd ever wake up," Garrus whispered, and his eyes blurred with tears.

Kara coughed again and tried to reach up to touch his face, her arms held back by IV tubes. Garrus took her other hand and held it tight, listening intently as she spoke.

"You… you did give me an order," she whispered, and this time she smiled through the pain.

Garrus blinked at her, and this time the tears did fall.

"Come back alive…" he breathed.

As gently as he could, avoiding all of the tubes and the wires, Garrus wrapped his arms around her, and he held her close, and thanked whatever gods were up there that he could do so.

It'd be an awfully empty galaxy without you…

Answer: Destroy/Shepard lives, Extended Cut

I know the destruction of all synthetic life is a terrible burden to live with, but Kara Shepard went into this mess with one goal, and that's how she came out of it: with the Reapers destroyed. And Garrus isn't going to leave her side again if he can help it. This is a very headcanon piece, but that's the way things worked out in Kara's story – the Reapers were destroyed, and somehow, she lived. For me, and for her? That's the perfect ending.

This is my personal Headcanon. You don't have to like it, and I respect the headcanons of others.